HBO’s Watchmen is now two episodes deep with the mystery of who exactly killed Chief Judd Crawford (Don Johnson) still unfolding. As we saw in a preview last week, tonight’s episode will see a new person on the case — FBI Agent Laurie Blake. But what will the former Silk Spectre bring to the investigation, and who does she really think killed Crawford? The story continues.
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Spoilers for tonight’s episode of Watchmen, “She Was Killed By Space Junk,” below.
We open with a woman in a blue telephone-type booth, but it’s not a phone per se. Instead, she’s calling Doctor Manhattan on Mars. The woman tells him a “joke” about a bricklayer who is precise with bricks and how he plans to teach his daughter to be a bricklayer, too by having her build something. She does it perfectly but there’s one extra brick. The bricklayer is upset, but the daughter tosses the brick into the air. The woman claims she messed up the joke. As she’s telling this joke, we watch a woman rob a bank when a costumed vigilante shows up. Turns out the robbery was a sting operation used to catch the vigilante. The woman, both at the bank and in the booth, is Agent Laurie Blake. When the vigilante tries to escape, she shoots him.
At her home, Blake puts on some music and opens a locked briefcase in her bedroom when there’s a knock at the door. Senator Keene shows up, thanking her for capturing the vigilante. She invites him in, he admires her pet owl, “Who.” Keene is sending her out of town to Tulsa to investigate the death of Judd Crawford. He doens’t think the Seventh Kavalry killed him and suspects vigilantes instead. Blake doesn’t want to do it, but Keene suggests that once he becomes president, he could release someone from prison – and it’s strongly suggested that person is Nite Owl. Agent Blake, you see, was once Silk Spectre.
Back in the phone booth, Blake tells a new joke, this time about three dead heroes who get to the Pearly Gates to meet God. The first hero, an “Owl guy,” is asked how many people he killed in his pursuit of justice. He ends up being sent to Hell by God for being too soft and not killing anyone.
Agent Blake slips into a briefing about the Seventh Kavalry and Crawford’s death and is informed she’s going to Tulsa. Blake insists on going to Tulsa alone, but has to take someone with so she takes the nerdy guy operating the projector, Petey. He knows exactly who Agent Blake is as a former hero while they fly to Tulsa and she admits she’s no fan of Adrian Veidt. In Tulsa, she and Petey begin their investigation.
At the phone booth again Blake moves to the next hero in her joke. This one has smarts, the smartest man in the world. She’s talking about Veidt, but when he reveals that he killed three million people with a squid – and argues with God about things after being called a monster — God sends him to hell for killing too many people.
Red Scare and Pirate Jenny show up at their secret police facility with someone they’ve arrested. Blake and Petey show up as well. She’s looking for Looking Glass. Inside there are a lot of cops in masks as well as people who have been arrested as suspected Kavalry. Blake meets with Looking Glass inside the Pod. Looking Glass (real name Wade Tillman), unmasks for her while they chat. He begrudgingly confirms that Sister Night — Angela Abar — got the information about the raid on the farm. She took the day off, though, to prepare for Crawford’s funeral that afternoon.
Back in the phone booth, Blake tells a joke about a “Blue God” — Doctor Manhattan — and his meeting with Regular God. When asked about how many people he’s killed, the Blue God shrugs and says it doesn’t matter and also says he’s already in hell. Sure enough, Regular God sends him to hell.
Blake and Petey go to Crawford’s funeral. At the funeral, Blake approaches Angela and her family, wanting to meet with Angela soon. Angela insists that she’s retired from the police force. As Angela delivers her eulogy, a Kavalry member crawl through a tunnel and surfaces inside a crypt before strapping himself with explosives, demanding that the senator surrender himself as a race traitor or everyone dies. Blake then shoots the Kavalry member dead while Angela drags his body into Judd’s grave and shoves his coffin on over it before the explosives go off.
At the country manor, Jeremy Irons’ character is hard at work making a suit of some sort that he puts the new Mr. Phillips in. Whatever test he was trying failed. This Mr. Phillips freezes to death prompting the declaration that to declare a need for “thicker skin” for the next suit. He then goes off to kill a buffalo on apparently someone else’s property but is shot at by someone in a mask when he tries to take the buffalo’s hide. Back at his manor, he receives a letter. The letter is from the man who shot at him — the Game Warden — threatening him to not violate their agreement again. Jeremy Irons’ character writes a letter in reply, claiming he isn’t doing anything to violate their agreement and signs the letter Adrian Veidt. That night at midnight, Veidt suits up as Ozymandias to hunt again.
Senator Keene gives a press conference that Blake observes. She then takes coffee into the crypt where she tracks down Angela investigating. Turns out Blake had planned to exhume Crawford for her own investigation but now she can’t. Blake reveals that she saw wheelchair tracks at the tree where Crawford was hanged and that she found the secret compartment in his closet. Blake is clearly onto Angela, but Angela isn’t scared.
We then get a voiceover of the joke’s continuation while we see Blake in her hotel room. This time, the hero approaching God is a woman — presumably Silk Spectre. While the voiceover continues, we see inside the briefcase: it is a Doctor Manhattan-style dildo. Next, we see, though, Blake goes to Petey and its implied that they have sex instead. As the voiceover continues — and we cut back to the phone booth — God has no idea who the woman is and she reveals that she’s the little girl from the first joke, the one who threw the brick in the air. The brick she threw then falls, striking God and killing him and sending him to Hell. With her time running out, Blake fights the emotion in her voice as she says that Doctor Manhattan probably doesn’t even listen to the messages or even care, though she says “goodnight, Jon,” before hanging up. After hanging up her call, as Blake walks away, Angela’s car falls from the sky and she looks up and sees Mars looking especially bright before she starts to laugh.
Watchmen airs Sundays at 10/9c on HBO.
